Disclaimer!
Before I start I will say that when you get here you may be
forgiven for being somewhat underwhelmed with this cache location.
At first glance it's not the most exciting place for a cache.
However it has a rich history and not that long ago was the scene
of a terrible tragedy. I have hidden a cache here in order to tell
you about all this. However if you don't like the place please say
so in your log. To be honest I would prefer a negative log to a
"Quick Find TFTC!" What I will say is that you will appreciate the
location much better if before/after you have found the cache go up
to the road just above (Crown St) and look down into the River. You
will be surprised how big a drop this is. There was no decent place
to hide a cache up here. Also take a look from Bank St Bridge.
Bridge St - Bank St Culvert
I've have always been fascinated by the coarse of the River
Croal. It starts in Middlebrook and flows its way into Bolton Town
Centre. In the 19th century it used to split the town of Bolton Le
Moors into Greater Bolton and Little Bolton. Over time these merged
into one. The croal itself has been culverted and now runs almost
completely underneath the town centre. The other side of the
MultiStory is a street called Bridge St. Given that there is no
sign of a bridge anywhere you may think it an unusual name. However
the River Croal flows right underneath it so not that long ago it
would have contained a bridge! This site is one of the few places
where The Croal pops up again.To see The Croal you will need to go
on the road above the cache (Crown St) and look down. Of all the
Croal's culverts this is the most recent one, It was only culverted
as recently as 1996. This spot looks unremarkable now but it was
once the scene of a great tragedy known as the Top Storey
Disaster.
Bridge St in the process of being culverted.
This is the other side of the car park. In 1996 the old Co-Op
supermarket was demolished and for a brief time the Croal was
visible again. This area is once more built on!
The Top Storey Disaster
This occurred on 1st May 1961 and it is probably the greatest
peacetime disaster in Bolton's history. You are standing almost at
the spot where it occurred. At the time it was national news but
nowadays has been largely forgotten even in Bolton itself. When I
look at the river here I usually think of the people who jumped
over 80ft to their deaths in it less than 50 years ago. The Top
Storey club is long gone and this tiny bit of river is all that
remains. Nineteen people lost their lives here, how sad that there
is no memorial for them.
The Top Storey Club
This is taken from the Lancashire Evening Telegraphs 40th
anniversary coverage of the disaster in 2001
It numbed Bolton and horrified a Britain where the club culture
was just starting to be king in those Swinging Sixties. But exactly
why 19 people died at the Top Storey Club has never been
discovered. And today, 40 years on, although there were allegations
of arson at the time, the authorities are no nearer finding the
cause of the worst peacetime fire tragedy ever to hit the
borough.
The club's name has passed into the local vocabulary of those
old enough to remember the shock waves of what happened on that
evening of Monday, May 1, 1961. But the real legacy lives on in the
massive change in the laws governing safety in clubs, licensed
premises and entertainment venues that followed the national outcry
over the Bolton club. Today there is now no chance of a Top Storey
Club being opened anywhere in the land, including Bolton. Controls
are simply too tight. It was, as the name suggested, on the upper
two floors of a warehouse, with a kitchen furniture makers on the
ground floor. But it was a deceptive building, much higher on the
side where it overlooked the River Croal. There is no sign of the
original building today. It stood where the multi-storey car park
stands today, and even the river is hidden from view in a
culvert.
Inside, a single timber staircase led to the dance hall and bar.
On the fateful night customers were upstairs, drinking and dancing
to tape-recorded music and playing the elaborate one-armed bandit
which was a feature of the place. Downstairs, club manager Bill
Bohannon smelled a whiff of smoke and investigated.His search took
him to the ground floor where he noticed smoke creeping under the
door which led to the workshops. He kicked in the door and found
himself looking into a blazing inferno. The Top Storey Club
disaster had begun.
He tried to get back upstairs, but was forced back by the
intense heat. The narrow staircase acted as a chimney of death,
funnelling the smoke and flames directly onto the dance floor. The
men and women enjoying a night's drinking and dancing just moments
before had nowhere to go -- no way to avoid the choking inferno the
little club quickly became, save for the windows opening into the
black night. One survivor, Gillian Grimshaw, later spoke of those
moments from her hospital bed. As the heat built up alarmingly,
most of the people crowded to the windows on the river side of the
building. They were gasping for air. Some sought protection by
crouching beneath the bar, the men trying to shield the women with
their bodies. Gillian was one of those at the window. Somehow, she
lost her balance and fell out backwards, down the 80 feet towards
the river. The next thing she remembered was being on the river
bank, not knowing that she had been saved by her brother-in-law,
Bill Bohannon.
He held out his arms and tried to catch her as she fell. Sadly,
Mr Bohannon, himself injured, could not save his own wife, Sheila,
who was later named among the dead. Fifteen of the dead were
clustered in the bar areas. Three others had jumped from the window
into the rain-swollen waters of the River Croal below, and lived.
Four others didn't make it. The body of one young man was washed a
mile downstream in the fast-flowing water. As a graphic account in
the BEN stated: "As onlookers -- including policemen on their way
home from a dance at the former Palais -- watched horrified and
helpless, bodies fell one by one from windows, thumping down on the
paved bed of the river."
It took firemen from Horwich, Leigh and Radcliffe almost two and
a half hours before they could even recover the bodies from the
still-warm club.Those who died were found huddled in the bar area.
The fact that the club was on the top storey had hampered the
rescue severely. Even the turntable ladders did not reach the upper
windows. Tragically, there was a loading door which two people had
tried to open, not realising that the door's movement was
restricted by a false floor and it had to be lifted off its hinges
to open.
On the night of the fire, on the other side of a door, a large
furniture van had been parked outside the club close to the
wall.Clubgoers could have jumped onto it in an easy escape route.
Safety had been only feet away, but they never knew. Investigators
found an empty thinners' tin near the seat of the blaze, but it was
never established that the blaze was started deliberately. One of
the few survivors, jazz singer Pedro Gonzales, who had worked at
the club, alleged that his ex-bosses there "had a lot of enemies".
An inquest returned an open verdict on all 19 dead. But the lessons
of the Top Storey were swiftly learned. Safeguards were put in
place that formed the framework of official controls today. A
spokesman for Bolton police confirmed that, if new evidence on the
tragedy ever came to light, it would be considered. However,
everything would have to be looked at in the context of the passage
of time.